Webster’s Definition of Commodity: a good or service whose wide availability typically leads to smaller profit margins and diminishes the importance of factors (as brand name) other than price.

I’ve been contemplating a question that is inevitable with access to the masses being what it is these days. Crowd sourcing is a hot trend so does that mean that creativity is now a commodity? Because I can find ideas, logos, photos, and even video production by conducting online contests that leverage egos and ambition, does that make creativity differentiated by price only?

2 Responses to “Creative Commidity”

When creativity becomes commoditized, there will be a natural flow toward the lower regions of creative. A smoothing out of the curve… a tendency toward the mediocre.

A camel.

A political party.

5 guys trying to figure out where to have lunch.

The commonality is what is looked for and exhaulted, while the originality is lost in the clutter. It has to be – we are talking about people who have personal and other agendas, personality quirks, a sense of entitlement or a sense of estrangement… people.

I would rather be led by a general who had proven his leadership than by an ‘let’s all figure out what to do and come up with a plan that everyone can agree on.’

I think there is a difference between what the conception of crowdsourcing is and what it actually creates… and how it creates it. We aren’t talking about Open Source as crowd sourcing. Open Source is an end, ‘crowdsourcing’ is a method.

And at some point, leaders of the crowdsourcing event will emerge and ‘direct’ the crowd toward outcomes decided by the few as being desired.

I have seen the logos and the web designs and such. Seems we used to call this ‘spec’ work. Then the “NO SPEC” people emerged and the people who still want to get spec work find a nifty new name for spec work – ‘crowdsourcing’ and go right back to it.

In the end it is unsustainable, so we’ll see how it plays out.

BTW, I do believe that there are places where ‘crowdsourcing’ works well. Having all the cancer research in one place to help the process, or having the ability for all voices to be heard in civic projects.

But no matter what, we always go back to searching for a leader to make sense of the crowd’s choices.

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